


A risen Apollo is not meant to love a fallen Dionysus

by mercuryhatter



Series: Fallen Dionysus 'verse [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, ace!Enjolras, everyone dies because canon, implied ace!Grantaire but who knows maybe he's too busy being drunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-11
Updated: 2013-01-11
Packaged: 2017-11-25 01:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/633802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuryhatter/pseuds/mercuryhatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras knew this. He remembered, he was probably the only one who could remember a time when he and Grantaire both had been human. Enjolras had not always been carved from marble. Grantaire had not always been made from mud. But Enjolras wasn’t even sure that Grantaire himself remembered that anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A risen Apollo is not meant to love a fallen Dionysus

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly book canon but could be applied to the musical, I guess? I haven't seen that in it's entirety, so I'm not sure. Most of the metaphors referring to Enjolras and Grantaire belong to Victor Hugo, excluding the Dionysus one, as does all of the dialogue. Cross-posted to my tumblr (permets---tu).
> 
> I might be doing another of these that follows the same basic format but from Grantaire's side of things.

Grantaire had once been a real person. Someone with hobbies and passions, reasons and purpose and maybe even love. Maybe even hope. He used to paint and go to school and dance and fence and when he drank with friends the alcohol buoyed him up rather than dragging him down to drown. When he talked it was without the bitter sarcastic edge of the unwilling cynic, and if he hadn’t been quite the happiest, he had still been a person in his own right. Not a symbol that life had so viciously wrangled into a reluctant counterpoint to those who were able to dream of tomorrow, stitched together with philosophizing words he didn’t mean and filled with wine he couldn’t remember drinking.  
  
Enjolras knew this. He remembered, he was probably the only one who could remember a time when he and Grantaire both had been human. Enjolras had not always been carved from marble. Grantaire had not always been made from mud. But Enjolras wasn’t even sure that Grantaire himself remembered that anymore.  
  
They had never been in each other’s circles, before. Enjolras didn’t know if Grantaire had ever seen him, but he had certainly seen Grantaire-- the boisterous painter, a dab of oil nearly always smudging his nose or cheek, his face ruddy with laughter. Maybe sadness lurking behind the eyes, yes, maybe that, but what was a painter without a small dose of melancholy? And Enjolras, even then Grantaire’s opposite, studious and bookish, serious, never one for parties, he would watch from behind a book in the corner of a cafe while Grantaire proudly took center stage, mounting a table to tell outrageous stories and whip the students into riots of laughter.  
  
Rather, Enjolras would sometimes bitterly reflect, like the way Grantaire would watch him from behind a bottle as Enjolras incited revolutions instead of merriment.  
  
Enjolras was several years younger than Grantaire and so when the young painter’s presence faded from the popular student cafes he simply assumed that he had moved away or gained an apprenticeship. His absence was noticed, of course, by all; the cafes were quieter for lack of him for a time. Enjolras would still sit in his corner, reading or writing and vaguely regretting that he had never asked the young painter’s name. Everyone called him R, he signed his paintings with this letter in grand, curly capital, but that was not much to go on, and eventually a new entertainer took his place and R was forgotten.  
  
It was years before Enjolras saw him again, and even then, the joyous art student he had watched never really made another appearance. In his place was a man whose face was clean of paints, but scored with lines and curtained with an almost protective layer of grime. His hair had grown out and the hidden melancholy which Enjolras had noticed was now worn like a defiant mantle all around him, with a new and coarse bitterness that made it, and Grantaire himself, repulsive. He slouched in corners, surrounded by fortresses of empty wine bottles, and it was no wonder that Enjolras didn’t recognize him, really-- in fact, if he thought about it, he wasn’t even quite sure when this new Grantaire had started appearing at meetings. It was possible he’d been there since the beginning and Enjolras had simply not noticed.  
  
Enjolras had never asked Grantaire about this. He was not sure he wanted to know the answer.  
  
He didn’t realize that he was in love with Grantaire at first. If the suggestion had been made, he would have called it absurd without a second thought-- and even now, after over two years of shared kisses and heated fights, it was still an absurd idea. A risen Apollo was not meant to love a fallen Dionysus, as Grantaire himself reminded Enjolras constantly, in the bravado-laden but paper-thin tone of one who is terrified that someday his words might be taken to heart.  
  
He didn’t realize, and never has, that the one he calls Apollo would do very nearly anything to keep him. Grantaire’s words would always be useless in forcing him away. It was France, and liberty, that Grantaire had to fear.  
  
Their first year was one where both were more forgiving than they became later. Every time Enjolras declared that he fully intended to die for France, Grantaire was sure that he would change his mind; every time Grantaire came home drunk and ready to fight Enjolras was sure it would never happen again.  
  
They entered their second year with no such illusions. Grantaire called Enjolras a suicidal fool and Enjolras snapped back that Grantaire was a useless drunk. But there seemed to be no reason to separate just because of this. Two facts remained: that each loved the other and that both were dying. This last was a fact apparent in Enjolras’ tired red eyes as events in Paris came to a head and equally apparent in the yellow tinge creeping inexorably towards Grantaire’s irises. The first seemed to be simply a law of nature, “as simple as the law of complementary colors.”  
  
When they were not arguing, Grantaire would insinuate himself into Enjolras’ space as the latter read a book or wrote a speech or pored over maps of Paris. Enjolras would eventually find his fingers in Grantaire’s tightly curled hair, reading out loud as a faint smile softened Grantaire’s face. Or they were kissing, increasingly desperate kisses that ended in gasping breaths and bruising grips. They never got farther than kisses and the way they wrapped around each other at night, sleeping together in the most literal sense. Grantaire once joked that Enjolras was the only sure cure he’d ever found for insomnia without the aftereffects of his usual medication, and Enjolras, who had never been a sound sleeper himself, agreed.  
  
In public, someone paying close attention to Grantaire possibly could have divined his feelings, but then no one paid close attention to him anyway, and Enjolras showed him nothing but scorn and, occasionally, grudging trust. He sometimes tried to stop himself from being so harsh with Grantaire, but the other man’s mocking commentaries and stubborn lack of hope needled him so much that he could hardly help it. They sat in meetings and flung lances at each other daily, sometimes to the point where Enjolras would stay with another one of the students, or Grantaire would become drunk to the point of spending his night under a table or against an alley wall. No one thought this strange: of course Enjolras would scorn Grantaire, their minds were completely at odds with each other. The only thing the other students found strange was that Enjolras permitted Grantaire to remain with them at all. Grantaire took their insults and their ridicule with a crooked smile which practically welcomed and invited such judgments: it was a fact not commonly known that Grantaire was actually perfectly in agreement with the shared opinions the students held about him. If it was a mystery why Enjolras permitted Grantaire to stay, it was equally as strange to everyone that Grantaire would even want to stay.  
  
 _“You believe in nothing.”_  
  
 _“I believe in you.”_  
  
It really was as simple as that.  
  
When Grantaire begged Enjolras to grant him the errand of taking pamphlets to the Barriere du Maine, it was with trepidation both at Grantaire’s lack of natural ability to complete the task and a secret fear that Grantaire was suddenly becoming as enamored of the cause as everyone else. Despite the fact that Enjolras should be happy at that possibility, he feared it without quite knowing why. It would change the man he loved at a fundamental level, it would mean losing the Grantaire that complemented and completed him, and selfishly, Enjolras feared that.  
  
His second fear was as unfounded as his first was proven true. Grantaire later confided to him that he had been about to try to do his part when he realized that he was wholly incapable of lying about his own fervor. To do so, he explained, would have disgraced everything that Enjolras held dear.  
  
Enjolras had simply regarded him contemptuously and stormed out. He should have known, he supposed. Grantaire was many things, but he was not and had never been a liar.  
  
They didn’t see each other again until the barricades were erected and the time of battle was near. _Enjolras disdains me_ , Grantaire had said, before he passed out on the table, and Enjolras had felt a brief and treacherous flash of hope that he would live, if only to kiss the truth of his feelings into Grantaire’s mouth, hold his constantly shaking hands steady and hope that Grantaire understood how Enjolras’ words could lie without meaning to, and hurt without wishing to.  
  
The flash did not last, and Enjolras cried as he shot the first opposing soldier, but held back his tears as one by one his friends fell around him. He lived solely because he knew absolutely that his presence was the spark that kept those around him fighting; he would fall last, because if he did not, the battle would die half-born.  
  
By the end, exhaustion and the constant threat of death had almost forced Grantaire out of Enjolras’ mind. His eyes burned from the gunsmoke and his muscles trembled; a look out the window behind him told him that he was, indeed, the last one standing. Something inside him released. He turned to face the soldiers with a new light in his eyes, throwing his gun aside almost with a sense of relief.  
  
“Shoot me,” he declared, and he had never felt so peaceful as he did then. He answered the questions of the soldiers without really listening and could have died satisfied had a voice not risen just as the soldiers were taking aim.  
  
 _“Viva la Republique! I’m one of them.”_  
  
Enjolras was jarred from his almost transcendent state as his eyes fell upon Grantaire, shoving his way with purpose through the soldiers and debris. Enjolras could not tell if Grantaire’s eyes were a mirror for the fire within his, or if Grantaire had somehow gained a spark of his own. As if from miles away he heard Grantaire telling the soldiers to finish both of them at a single blow.  
  
Of course. Enjolras could not exist without the battle for freedom just as Grantaire could not exist without Enjolras. There was no other way that this could end. Enjolras had not fully realized until this moment that his suicide upon the sword of the Republic was by extension the murder of his friend.  
  
Their hands touched and it hurt more than the anticipated gunshots. There was a hesitation where they held each other’s eyes, and then, almost as an afterthought:  
  
“Do you permit it?”  
  
But it was as if he had spoken volumes rather than just the one question, and while the soldiers heard none of it, Enjolras heard every word. He smiled, and the expression held his answers to every question Grantaire had just asked-- yes, I love you, yes, I forgive you, yes, come die with me, in this ending we are made perfect. Had there been more time, they might have kissed, but it would have been an unnecessary epilogue to the vows they had just given each other.  
  
This silent conversation was hardly finished when bullets tore through them both; Enjolras was shoved into the wall and his hands scrambled for both of Grantaire’s, but the other man was going down and Enjolras, with seconds of life left inside him, didn’t have the power to hold him up. Their hands fell apart from each other and when Grantaire hit the ground Enjolras could have sworn he felt the vibration all the way through his body before body and soul separated at last.  
  
The remaining tableau was so silent and still that it might have been a painting, illuminated by a belated morning shaft of sunlight that lit Enjolras’ hair from behind and gave him a secondhand fire that burned afterimages into the souls of his killers.


End file.
